The activity of the Crimean Diocese of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is practically blocked. There is no OCU community left on the peninsula that is not persecuted.
The head of the Prosecutor’s Office for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ihor Ponochovnyi, reported this during a press conference in Ukrinform, Media Detector reports.
“Unfortunately, OCU operations in Crimea are actually curtailed. Because every religious community is persecuted, services are banned, churches are shut down, and property is seized,” he said.
The prosecutor stressed that Russia is helping Moscow’s Orthodox Church establish monopoly in the temporarily occupied Crimea.
“It plays one of the key roles of keeping in fear and obedience all civilians in Crimea and the Russian Federation, and is being used as an effective propaganda mechanism to erase Ukrainian identity in Crimea. Pseudo-religious Muslim organizations are being created to assimilate the Crimean Tatar population within the framework of the Russian world so that they work in line with the same narratives,” the prosecutor concluded.
